Chaos and the Anti-Thread

[Aragorn]

I'm only going to say one last thing about this, and then I'll shut up. What do you consider most important? That we promote certain political movements, religious convictions, sexual orientations, skin colors, names of countries, et al — all of which are meant to accentuate that we are not all the same — or that we find common ground and promote that which unites us all^*?

Zwarte Piet is the helper (or one of the helpers) of Sinterklaas, and his job is to climb up and down chimneys in order to bring candy and toys to the children. The Teletubbies are colorful and (for a toddler) cuddly looking creatures, whose job it is to entertain the little ones with animated stories that appeal to their intellectual and social development. Bert and Ernie are intended to make kids laugh with their antics.

We are all human, and we are all mortal. And we're all living on a planet ruled by psychopaths, and governed by an equally psychopathic control system called "the financial sector". Our job as human beings, is to make this world a better place to live in, for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren, and for everyone else who comes after us. There has been enough division already. It is time for unity.

Now that is a truly liberal thought.

:unity:

* And wasn't that the core message of "The Lord Of The Rings"?

Gimli: Legolas: Gimli:

"I never thought I'd die side by side with an Elf!" "What about side by side with a friend?" "Aye, I can do that."

[Dreamtimer]

So the concern is moral degradation. That is no doubt a valid concern.

I'd never heard of the govt. issued pamphlet about it being OK to have sexual arousal with children. That is most certainly disturbing.

Here's the catch about morality. You can't enforce it through law. You can try to control behavior and the harder you try the more authoritarian you get. And that does not mean that we just have to let everyone do what they want. It's not a simple one or the other choice.

We teach children to obey because they don't have experience and judgment. The idea is that when they're adults they make the right decisions by choice. This is one of the primary functions of family. The more peoples' choices are dictated, the less moral and grown up we all are. We can't be each other's parents. We're supposed to be each other's brother (or sister).

Libertine or not, we all have tendencies, some of which are not OK. If we believe that people who wave the flag of morality are actually more moral we're deluding ourselves. They just put up the right appearances while they're doing stuff behind the scenes and hiding behind their robes, or suits and ties, or uniforms.

There are many who make the case that the moral degradation is a symptom (rather than cause) of decline of empire.

The coupling of pedophilia with homosexuality blurs things terribly, which is why it's done so much. The two are not the same. If aberrant people want to glom onto gay rights to defend their own pedophilia we need to be vigilant and call it what it is.

This is one of the reasons we need real and strong science. It tells us straight out that children aren't made for sex and it's wrong to force it on them. Period. It also tells us how stupid racism and sexism are. I could go on. Take a look at who is undermining science in society 'cause it ain't the liberals where I come from.

We can have social standards and we still need laws because we haven't figured out how to weed out the sociopaths yet. But it's sociopaths who want to demonize and scapegoat so they can keep on doing their stuff behind the scenes.

I don't see the gay marches or women' marches as anything more than people saying "Hey! We're fed up with being treated like shit and second class citizens. We're sick and tired of being ignored, pandered to and swept under the rug. We matter."

Look up Matthew Shepard. He was brutalized. People had tremendous prejudices around AIDS to the point that they were afraid to talk to hemophiliacs. Those prejudices cause just as much moral degradation as anything.

[Aragorn]

So the concern is moral degradation. That is no doubt a valid concern.

I'd never heard of the govt. issued pamphlet about it being OK to have sexual arousal with children. That is most certainly disturbing.

I don't remember the exact time anymore, but it was while I was still on Facebook, so that must have been between 2007 and 2010, I think. One of my friends — who was also into the kind of subject matter that we discuss here at the forum — brought it to my attention. It was published in Germany.

Here's the catch about morality. You can't enforce it through law. You can try to control behavior and the harder you try the more authoritarian you get. And that does not mean that we just have to let everyone do what they want. It's not a simple one or the other choice.

Agreed. Making laws to regulate people's behavior is only going to do three things:

• It externalizes the moral compass and the sense of ethics, just as religions do. If you do this, you go to hell, and if you do that, you go to jail.
• It stifles people's mental evolution into responsible adults, keeping them in perpetual need of an authority which rules over them.
• It punishes the good people and allows the perpetrators to go underground and/or find loopholes in the system.

We teach children to obey because they don't have experience and judgment. The idea is that when they're adults they make the right decisions by choice. This is one of the primary functions of family. The more peoples' choices are dictated, the less moral and grown up we all are. We can't be each other's parents. We're supposed to be each other's brother (or sister).

Exactly!

Libertine or not, we all have tendencies, some of which are not OK. If we believe that people who wave the flag of morality are actually more moral we're deluding ourselves. They just put up the right appearances while they're doing stuff behind the scenes and hiding behind their robes, or suits and ties, or uniforms.

Yes, and here it is actually predominantly the conservatives who are to be blamed. They hold up the flag of morality, while continuing to do their own dirty deeds in the dark.

There is actually a song about this from a Dutch singer, Rob de Nijs. It is a song in which he sings to a girl who is a prostitute, and he describes how they all want a piece of her when they've been drinking, but on Sunday, they are sitting inside the church, next to their wife, their head down under a sense of guilt, and then they put a few coins in the donation scale to buy back their soul from God.

The song was a big hit, but it's hard to translate the words into English without violating the artistic aspect of the lyrics. But just for those of us who speak Dutch, I'll include the video, even though I'm pretty sure that we all know the song very well.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnnmYjMpWf4

There are many who make the case that the moral degradation is a symptom (rather than cause) of decline of empire.

It could be. Moral degradation was either way quite abundantly present in the ancient Roman Empire. Others on the other hand believe that it's bound to eras rather than to empires. The French call it "fin de siècle" — the end of the century, with the expectation that the world is going to come to an end and that therefore people are indulging in decadence because they think they've got nothing left to lose.

The coupling of pedophilia with homosexuality blurs things terribly, which is why it's done so much. The two are not the same. If aberrant people want to glom onto gay rights to defend their own pedophilia we need to be vigilant and call it what it is.

I suspect that this collation stems from the Roman Catholic Church. They believe that sexual orientation is determined only later in life — as opposed to that it is genetically determined — and that homosexuality and pedophilia are stages that one goes through on the evolutionary path to becoming a heterosexual adult.

There was actually a high-ranking official of the Roman Catholic Church who stated the above out loud on television somewhere in the past decade, when the circumference of the pedophilia scandals within the church started reaching the mainstream news. There was a lot of angry reaction to that, especially from gay people.

This is one of the reasons we need real and strong science. It tells us straight out that children aren't made for sex and it's wrong to force it on them. Period. It also tells us how stupid racism and sexism are. I could go on. Take a look at who is undermining science in society 'cause it ain't the liberals where I come from.

True. And in the USA more than in any country, the conservatives — read: the hardline Republicans — are the ones most opposed to scientific development. Donald Trump built his entire campaign on how cool it is to be stupid. That should tell anyone enough.

We can have social standards and we still need laws because we haven't figured out how to weed out the sociopaths yet. But it's sociopaths who want to demonize and scapegoat so they can keep on doing their stuff behind the scenes.

Correct. Divide and conquer, and regulate the good people so that the bad people can go underground.

I don't see the gay marches or women' marches as anything more than people saying "Hey! We're fed up with being treated like shit and second class citizens. We're sick and tired of being ignored, pandered to and swept under the rug. We matter."

Look up Matthew Shepard. He was brutalized. People had tremendous prejudices around AIDS to the point that they were afraid to talk to hemophiliacs. Those prejudices cause just as much moral degradation as anything.

Yes, but I maintain that we must look at what unites us, as opposed to looking at what sets us apart from everyone else. Identity is a good thing. Sense of self is a good thing. But we're never going to get anywhere as a global civilization if we keep on focusing on our differences, whether it's through vilification or through promotion. Unity is the key word here.

[Elen]

So the concern is moral degradation. That is no doubt a valid concern.

I'd never heard of the govt. issued pamphlet about it being OK to have sexual arousal with children. That is most certainly disturbing.

Here's the catch about morality. You can't enforce it through law. You can try to control behavior and the harder you try the more authoritarian you get. And that does not mean that we just have to let everyone do what they want. It's not a simple one or the other choice.

We teach children to obey because they don't have experience and judgment. The idea is that when they're adults they make the right decisions by choice. This is one of the primary functions of family. The more peoples' choices are dictated, the less moral and grown up we all are. We can't be each other's parents. We're supposed to be each other's brother (or sister).

Libertine or not, we all have tendencies, some of which are not OK. If we believe that people who wave the flag of morality are actually more moral we're deluding ourselves. They just put up the right appearances while they're doing stuff behind the scenes and hiding behind their robes, or suits and ties, or uniforms.

There are many who make the case that the moral degradation is a symptom (rather than cause) of decline of empire.

The coupling of pedophilia with homosexuality blurs things terribly, which is why it's done so much. The two are not the same. If aberrant people want to glom onto gay rights to defend their own pedophilia we need to be vigilant and call it what it is.

This is one of the reasons we need real and strong science. It tells us straight out that children aren't made for sex and it's wrong to force it on them. Period. It also tells us how stupid racism and sexism are. I could go on. Take a look at who is undermining science in society 'cause it ain't the liberals where I come from.

We can have social standards and we still need laws because we haven't figured out how to weed out the sociopaths yet. But it's sociopaths who want to demonize and scapegoat so they can keep on doing their stuff behind the scenes.

I don't see the gay marches or women' marches as anything more than people saying "Hey! We're fed up with being treated like shit and second class citizens. We're sick and tired of being ignored, pandered to and swept under the rug. We matter."

Look up Matthew Shepard. He was brutalized. People had tremendous prejudices around AIDS to the point that they were afraid to talk to hemophiliacs. Those prejudices cause just as much moral degradation as anything.

Now that is sense speaking out loud!

[Dreamtimer]

I keep on harping, in a nice way, in face to face life about how important it is to talk and communicate. I was talking with my sister-in-law about this just after the election. About how communication goes from family to community to society and back in the other direction. And I used examples so she could understand.

Her response was to say, (no joke) "Do you listen to yourself? It's just 'I', 'I', 'I'. You're all about yourself aren't you?" Apparently I used the 'I' pronoun too often. This is how easy it is for people to divide. To simply not even listen.

But I try anyway. So I stay on topic, tell her she knows that's nonsense, and try to make my point.

But I can't make horses drink. I know you know about that, Aragorn.

[Aragorn]

I keep on harping, in a nice way, in face to face life about how important it is to talk and communicate. I was talking with my sister-in-law about this just after the election. About how communication goes from family to community to society and back in the other direction. And I used examples so she could understand.

Her response was to say, (no joke) "Do you listen to yourself? It's just 'I', 'I', 'I'. You're all about yourself aren't you?" Apparently I used the 'I' pronoun too often. This is how easy it is for people to divide. To simply not even listen.

But I try anyway. So I stay on topic, tell her she knows that's nonsense, and try to make my point.

But I can't make horses drink. I know you know about that, Aragorn.

I had a girlfriend once whose every sentence started with the pronoun "I". But then again, she was a narcissistic psychopath, and she treated and regarded people as mere objects. She was also arrogant, full of herself, a racist, and utterly unfamiliar with both the concepts of shame and gratitude.

The relationship lasted for about three months in total, with various bouts of "on and off" throughout, always at her own whim. Eventually I was so sick and tired of her that I decided to dump her myself. Even though she was physically attractive, she was an awful woman, and I felt a great burden falling from my shoulders after I had walked away from her.

I could say even more about her, but given that this is an open thread and all...

[Emil El Zapato]

It's repression that leads to debauchery, not the other way around. Plenty of social science backs that up. It's almost a head spinner to understand it... Completely counter-intuitive but examples abound. By the way, Aragorn, liberal vs. libertine...that's an excellent turn of phrase and quite dangerous in my opinion...

One has to admit that the thread exists, but are they really liberal? Philosophical facades remember? I doubt Caligula will continue to be portrayed in history as a bleeding heart.

[Dumpster Diver]

Libertine or not, we all have tendencies, some of which are not OK. If we believe that people who wave the flag of morality are actually more moral we're deluding ourselves.

.

Flag of Morality:

[Emil El Zapato]

Here's an example of a phenomena that among others have far reaching consequences on human perception. As Dreamtimer said approx. 7% of the population is gay. So, in a balanced portrayal of humanity one would expect to see about 1/12 characters to be gay. It would be higher in the performing arts...

People viewing a group of African Americans of 6 people will see 12. It's all pretty weird.

Article: “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published online Feb. 24, 2014; Phillip Atiba Goff, PhD, and Matthew Christian Jackson, PhD; University of California, Los Angeles; Brooke Allison, PhD, and Lewis Di Leone, PhD, National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Boston; Carmen Marie Culotta, PhD, Pennsylvania State University; and Natalie Ann DiTomasso, JD, University of Pennsylvania.

[Aragorn]

By the way, Aragorn, liberal vs. libertine...that's an excellent turn of phrase and quite dangerous in my opinion...

One has to admit that the thread exists, but are they really liberal? Philosophical facades remember? I doubt Caligula will continue to be portrayed in history as a bleeding heart.

I was not the one to draw that semantic parallel — it has been around for quite a while already. But it is no secret that the socialists here in Belgium are quite libertine — many of them have extramarital affairs or lead promiscuous lives — and this does also appear to be a tendency among US Democrats, if the mainstream news is to be believed. And well, Bill Clinton certainly felt very comfortable in his promiscuity.

I'm not saying that Republicans wouldn't be stepping all over morals and/or the concept of romantic fidelity either, but they tend to cover it up more carefully than Democrats.

Anyway, that brings us back to the "Democrats versus Republicans" debate, and that's like comparing horse dung with cow dung, so I was hoping we could leave that behind us now.

[Dreamtimer]

Where in the world did you find that flag, Dumpy? Wow.

I definitely liked the coexist bumper stickers when they came out.

The last thing I want is a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'd rather deal with an openly libertine person than a fake moral one.

If we follow TargeT's rule then the image of the Democrats being the promiscuous ones is what the media wants you to believe, so look for the opposite.

I forgot to say, now that we have CRISPR, people can do way more than cure "the gay".

[Fred Steeves]

Anyway, that brings us back to the "Democrats versus Republicans" debate, and that's like comparing horse dung with cow dung, so I was hoping we could leave that behind us now.

Personally I much prefer cow dung, so according to your analogy does that make me a big R?

[Dumpster Diver]

Where in the world did you find that flag, Dumpy? Wow.

I definitely liked the coexist bumper stickers when they came out.

The last thing I want is a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'd rather deal with an openly libertine person than a fake moral one.

If we follow TargeT's rule then the image of the Democrats being the promiscuous ones is what the media wants you to believe, so look for the opposite.

I forgot to say, now that we have CRISPR, people can do way more than cure "the gay".

Well, I go to my favorite browser, which right now is duckduckgo but you can use Google too, type in "gay nazi flag" then puck the image tab at the top and a bunch of images will pop up. You will see a ton of gay nazi flags. I selected one that was only moderately offensive.

[Emil El Zapato]

moderately offensive...not really.

Just a really really stark example of 'cognitive dissonance'

Hey Dumpster...your the research guy...Check this one out. "I'll bet that left-handers are also over representated in Hollywood." Brain damage you know...

[Dumpster Diver]

moderately offensive...not really.

Just a really really stark example of 'cognitive dissonance'

Hey Dumpster...your the research guy...Check this one out. "I'll bet that left-handers are also over representated in Hollywood." Brain damage you know...

??? A bunch of Hitler’s top guys were gay.

Careful, the lefties here at TOT will gang up on you. I’m sorta ambidextrous, I do several things lefty. From the stats, about 11% of the population is Lefty, I’ve no real idea of how to calculate the portion of Hollywood air-head lefties to regular air-heads. But since a large proportion are Jewish, and the Ashkenazi Jews have about a 15 IQ point advantage over the avg. population in the US, And if lefties are really brain damaged, which could lower IQ, I would guess that lefties are a lower % of the Holly air-head population.

How’s that for twisted logic?

Btw, I had to hold myself back from posting the really offensive flag this time...